


A Partial Reunion

by scorched_wings



Category: The Binding - Bridget Collins
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Love, Gap Filler, Intimacy, Kissing, Longing, Love, M/M, Memory, Memory Loss, Missing Scene, Neck Kissing, Non-Graphic Sex, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Sex, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorched_wings/pseuds/scorched_wings
Summary: 'We are inches apart, sharing breath, and yet the distance between us is enough to make me scream. His breath is warm and just perceptibly shaky.'The night Emmett and Lucian spend together in the binder's house (pg. 390), from Emmett's perspective.
Relationships: Lucian Darnay/Emmett Farmer
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	A Partial Reunion

_'Slowly, as if something inside me is dissolving, I lean forward. My forehead touches his shoulder. I feel him freeze. We stand still, hardly breathing. Every part of me is concentrated on the place where my skin is against his shirt.'_ \- The Binding, pg. 390

Lucian leans in to me, and I freeze, as though I could pause time. His touch, while so familiar, is new with hesitance.

‘It’s alright,’ I murmur, and slowly reach out for him, careful not to spook him. He relaxes against me, and a strange urge to cry grows in my throat. He is giving me most of his weight, and my chest aches with the gravity of his trust. To have him in my arms again is an incomparable relief, though it can only partly soothe my disappointment not to have him wholly back. The fire’s crackle seems to mock me.

When he shifts I have to fight the urge to hold him fast against me, and instead I meet his eyes, studying them. Of course they lack the true recognition I crave, the other half of our connection. I am brought back to another moment in this same room, when he spoke to me across the workbench, when I couldn’t recognise him, couldn’t hear him explain. Now, too late, I can understand that loneliness in his eyes. I wonder if he can see the same in mine now. I wonder how I would have responded, then, if he had touched me. Would my body have remembered him, on some level? Could it have come to?

I can’t look away, but eventually he does, swiftly shaking his head, as though dizzy. He is supporting his own weight now, but I stay poised to catch him, hands resting on his back. I don’t think I could let him go unless he asked me to. Eventually his eyes return to my face, traversing my features this time, tracing my lips. We are inches apart, sharing breath, and yet the distance between us is enough to make me scream. His breath is warm and just perceptibly shaky. I am suddenly very aware of my own saliva. 

It is him who kisses me first, and I melt into him like ice struck with boiling water. Even as the distinction between his body and mine softens, I can’t seem to get him close enough. I open my lips, inviting his tongue inside me, and reach a questioning hand up his back inside his shirt, relishing his warmth. Each acceptance of my touch, each sigh, is the ending of a small pain. The rest of the world has surely vanished, obsolete. He abandons my lips, and I whine unashamedly. I can feel his smirk against my neck as he slowly, expertly, kisses down to my collar bone. I reach out for the rough bench to steady myself, half surprised it is still there, and he guides me to sit. Now I can wrap my legs around him, another relief. 

I try not to wonder whether any part of him remembers me, try not to feel jealous of the others he can freely recall. Nothing good can come from considering how his skill doesn’t necessarily imply knowledge of me, how I am probably not very unique.

Lucian’s body is not quite as I remember, his arms somewhat slighter and softer after his time away from the farm. But it responds to me the same, to my pressure and friction and attention, and I take unmatched pleasure in my knowledge of him.

While we hurry to my old bedroom, bound tightly together by our hands, a shiver of guilt crosses me. I tell myself that he doesn’t have to know all that we have done before to know what we are doing now, to _want_ to do it. _And he does want to, I can at least be sure of that_ \- my last coherent thought before he claims my consciousness completely with his clever, familiar touch.

Afterwards, I can’t let him go, even to sleep. He drifts off quickly in my arms, but I hold my eyes open for as long as I can, the warmth of his body giving mine permission to finally relax.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't get this beautiful novel out of my head, and I've been really enjoying the few, but all very well-done, pieces about it on this site. Would love to see more fanfiction being written about this book, so I thought I would do my part in that. Let me know what you think.


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